Most people don't have to pay their own rent as the employers take care of it. One bad thing is that many, if not most, of the landlords want all of the money up front - sec dep plus all the rent. I do know - only because I happened to see the lease- that my one bedroom flat in Abu Dhabi back in the mid-90's was about US$1000 per month.

This you can research on line. There are many agents with sites on the internet. They tend to be mostly the large and luxurious flats. There are few furnished flats. Normally you get a furniture allowance as part of your contract.

Al-Ain is actually two towns. Al-Ain is the Emirati part; the other half, whose name escapes me at the moment, is in Oman. There is no border, and indeed you can drive 100km into Oman without a police check (which rather makes nonsense of the strict visa requriments there are at the other border posts).

The Omani half of town is cheaper than the Emirati half. Some years back all the teachers at the military institute there were given a housing allowance and made a profit on it by living on the Omani side. The officer in charge of housing felt it was not right that the Emirati military should be paying to prop up the Omani economy, and insisted all staff had an Emirati address. The next week he found that all 27 members of staff had jointly rented out the same studio apartment. They kept living in Oman of course. He was not amused.

The reason for the strange status of the town goes back to 1952. The city was nominally part of Saudi Arabia but in practise was under the control of a mad mullah who made Osama Bin Laden seem like a trendy Anglican vicar. The British got annoyed at the perpetual incursions from his followers under the pretext of harrassing the infidel, and took the town over. When they left some years later they split it between their allies.

In the 1950's the "Buraimi Dispute" nearly led to an all-out war between the UK and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia claimed Buraimi Oasis was Saudi territory and sent a military force there to prove their point. They were eventually forced to leave the then "Trucial States" and Oman at the point of the gun.